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Thursday, January 22, 2015

Recently I searched the CCC list and Westlake Chemical Corp. (NYSE:WLK) popped up on one of my screens. My own, self-made Excel application directly lists all the competitors in the particular industry (Chemical-Specialty), ranked by market cap. Praxair (NYSE:PX), an industrial gases company, was the biggest with a market cap of $38 billion, yet somehow I never heard of the company. However, just by looking at the company overview, I could see that this company could be a potential add-on to my dividend growth portfolio.

There has only been one in-depth article on Seeking Alpha last year about this industry leader. So I decided to do a write-up of the company. Check out my new article on Seeking Alpha and let me know what you think.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Syngenta AG is a Swiss agribusiness operating in the crop protection and seeds business. In 2000, the agrochemical and seeds division of Novartis and the agrochemicals and biotechnology research divisions of AstraZeneca spun-off and merged to become Syngenta. Syngenta recently popped up in one of my screens in the CCC-list with a decent yield and high dividend growth rate. My article on Seeking Alpha provides a breakdown of the company and whether it is worthy as a possible addition to my dividend growth portfolio!

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Syngenta AG is a Swiss agribusiness operating in the crop protection and seeds business. In 2000, the agrochemical and seeds division of Novartis and the agrochemicals and biotechnology research divisions of AstraZeneca spun-off and merged to become Syngenta. Syngenta recently popped up in one of my screens in the CCC-list with a decent yield and high dividend growth rate. My article on Seeking Alpha provides a breakdown of the company and whether it is worthy as a possible addition to my dividend growth portfolio!

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Halfway 2013 I started my journey of becoming a Dividend Growth Investor. 1.5 years ago I sat down and calculated income goals for the coming 30 years. These goals (annual dividends received) were based on the assumed dividend growth, yield, monthly deposits and stock price appreciation. So far I've been killing these goals!

I am not going to change these goals because they are meant to be long-term goals. It's great that I am ahead of these goals for now but there are obviously going to be times when I might not be able to contribute as much to my portfolio. But just like last year I am going to set annual goals. These goals could differ from my long-term goals. It's just a method of keeping myself motivated and to keep pushing myself this year to reach more goals.

I decided to expand the theme of my goals a bit and to include some non-financial related goals. Without further ado, here is my list of goals for 2015.

Deposit €350 per month (on average)

Receive €950 in annual dividends

Write 24 premium articles for Seeking Alpha

Lose 10kg (currently at 98kg)

In general I think my goals are ambitious but not completely out of reach all together. I'll just have to work hard, earn some extra money and put aside time to write SA articles. I am off to a good start, my 2nd article of the year just got published! In the next few days I'll put out a reminder post for this article.

I am not going to set a goal for the value of my portfolio because I am hardly in control to reach that goal. Market gyrations have far too much influence on the portfolio value. I just can't expect to earn 20% for another year.

I'll keep all of you updated about my progress towards reaching my goals for 2015. Finally I hope all of you will reach your goals in 2015, whether they are financial or not!

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Yesterday I've purchased my first shares in 2015! It was finally time for me to pounce on the recent weakness in oil stocks. Currently I have three oil related stocks in my portfolio: Exxon Mobil, Kinder Morgan and Royal Dutch Shell. I decided to add 37 shares to my current position of Royal Dutch Shell for €26.77 per share. This is slightly more than I paid last year in my first purchase of RDS.

My reasoning is as follows:

Shell is a fundamentally sound company and also important: it's an integrated energy company. Lower oil prices are obviously bad for upstream business (exploration and production) but margins for downstream operations (refineries) are increasing.

Shell unloaded lots of assets earlier this year (roughly $10 bn) when oil prices were high. Great job by management!

Shell bought back shares recently when prices were low. Again, great job by management!

Oil prices will fluctuate. They have so done in the past and will do so in the future. I still see future potential in the oil business (like for 20-30 years or so) before alternatives are economically feasible and provide enough (and stable!) energy. The world's population is growing to 9 billion people and these people need energy. Shell can and will provide these needs.

The dividend yield of 6% looks awesome!

I wanted to add to this existing position to take advantage of the DRIP possibility (if that still exists). Usually I would get the opportunity to reinvest my dividend in stock IF the amount would be able to purchase at least 1 share. My former quarterly dividend was not enough to purchase 1 share of RDS: my current quarterly dividend definitely is.

I wanted to strengthen my EURO-denominated part of the portfolio. Even though the US dollar is getting more expensive, over 80% of my stock portfolio is listed in US dollars. I am not too uncomfortable with that right now, but it still provided me an extra argument in purchasing RDS.

So, these new 37 shares add roughly €60 to my annual forward dividend income which now stands at €866! To put my recent progress into perspective: I expected to earn around €850 in annual dividends in my 4th year of DGI. Right now I can expect this amount of money after just 2.5 years of DGI which means I am more than 1.5 year ahead of my income goals so far. It feels great!

The three companies I investigated were Franklin Resources (BEN), T. Rowe Price Group (TROW) and BlackRock (BLK). BlackRock is the biggest one in terms of assets under management (roughly $4.500 billion). Check out my article if you want to know why BlackRock is my favorite stock in this space! Please let me know what you think of the article.

Disclaimer: I currently don't own stock in any of the companies mentioned.